Writer
David Stephens
David Stephens is editor of the Honest History website (<a href="http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/the-honest-history-book-is-coming-in-april-2017/">honesthistory.net.au</a>), co-editor with Alison Broinowski of The Honest History Book (2017), and has been convener of the Heritage Guardians group, opposed to the War Memorial extensions. Sources for this post can be found on the Honest History site. He has contributed many articles to Honest History and Pearls and Irritations. He was previously an Australian public servant and a government relations consultant.
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The War Memorial is again running away from the Frontier Wars
The Australian War Memorial has passed from then Council Chair Brendan Nelson’s 29 September announcement of a “much broader, much deeper” treatment of Australian frontier violence to today’s buzzwords of “proportionate” and “modest”. The people who welcomed what looked like a change in direction at the Memorial have the right to feel dudded. Continue reading »
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Startling events at the Australian War Memorial
Small but significant metaphorical explosions have reverberated recently around the building that some Australians know as our most sacred site. Continue reading »
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‘Uluru Statement shows the way on Australian Frontier Wars’
In an earlier article for Pearls and Irritations I wrote, ‘Proper recognition and commemoration of the Australian Frontier Wars at the Australian War Memorial would be a practical expression of the Spirit of Uluru’. The Uluru Statement from the Heart is more than resonant prose. Its words about First Nations people taking their rightful place in Continue reading »
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Australian War Memorial needs to own Australian frontier wars
Proper recognition and commemoration of the Australian Frontier Wars at the Australian War Memorial would be a practical expression of the Spirit of Uluru. As the Albanese government begins the lengthy process of enshrining the Voice in the Australian Constitution, having the Memorial commit to Australian Frontier Wars recognition and commemoration could happen soon – Continue reading »
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Australian War Memorial expansion is a disgrace beyond words
Words matter, and the way the Australian War Memorial’s spruikers talk about its expansion and displays speaks volumes. Continue reading »
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Everyman as soldier: how men in suits in drawing rooms conned the people – and their families – into fighting on in WW1.
David Stephens reviews Douglas Newton’s Private Ryan and the Lost Peace: A Defiant Soldier and the Struggle against the Great War. Continue reading »
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It’s not what they know, it’s what they choose to tell us: reading the Australian War Memorial
Many more things happened in the past than are recorded in history. Some versions persist. Others have currency for a time, then get put aside, because fashions change or because the version does not fit political agendas or notions of what audiences expect. Some versions have been sanitised. Others are just suppressed. The Australian War Continue reading »
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Performing Anzac: Brendan Nelson and the emotion of remembrance
Dr Brendan Nelson came out swinging recently, providing a submission to the Public Works Committee defending the project he championed, the $498 million makeover of the Australian War Memorial. Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Anzac Day and History as What we Choose to Remember
The Covid-19 pandemic has been compared with the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19. That many of us knew nothing about that disaster of a century ago shows that history is what we choose to remember. Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. What will be the Nelsonian Legacy at the Australian War Memorial?
When it was announced that Dr Brendan Nelson was finishing up as Director of the Australian War Memorial, the Chair of the Memorial Council, Kerry Stokes, said Dr Nelson’s ‘enduring legacy’ will be the Memorial’s $498 million expansion program. There is a strong argument, however, that a more notable Nelsonian legacy is the Memorial’s eagerness Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Beneath the tumult and the shouting: Anzac Day as a private experience.
Anzac should be mostly private. It should be about the quiet, within-family, remembrance of – and caring about – people who have suffered in war, those who have been killed and not come home, those who have come home injured in body or mind, and those who live with the memory of the dead and Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS -People against the War Memorial’s grandiose extensions project.
On 23 March, the Canberra Times carried a story about an open letter from 83 distinguished Australians opposing the plan to spend $498 million on extensions to the Australian War Memorial. Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. This is why the $498m extensions to the Australian War Memorial should not go ahead
Saturday’s Nine (Fairfax) newspapers carried a story about 83 distinguished Australians signing a letter opposing the plan to expand the Australian War Memorial in Canberra at a cost of $498m. The letter says the extensions cannot be justified, they show the Memorial is being given preference over other national institutions, and the money could be Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. If the Australian War Memorial holds “the soul of the nation” why is the Memorial Council so full of brass?
The Director of the Australian War Memorial, Dr Brendan Nelson, often tells us that in the Memorial can be found ‘the soul of the nation’. The Prime Minister said the same thing, just the other day. Accepting for the moment that this characterisation is correct, why is it that eight of the 13 members Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. A grandiose commemorative project for Canberra raises lots of questions
There has been for some time an air of inevitability about the extensions to the Australian War Memorial, a project announced on Thursday by the Prime Minister and Memorial Director, Dr Brendan Nelson. Serious questions remain, however, about this grandiose undertaking, which is known irreverently to some observers as the Brendanbunker and could be seen Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Did the War Memorial deliberately mislead the Parliament about the money it gets from arms companies – or is it just careless about accountability? (Honest History 26.10.2018)
The Senate Hansard for 25 July 2018 contained the Australian War Memorial’s answer to Question 166from the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (FADT) Committee (question asked by then Senator Rhiannon in Estimates). The answer included a table that purported to show figures for the value of financial contributions that the Memorial received from military and Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. The Australian War Memorial admits receiving $1,271,473 over three years in donations from military and defence firms.
During Budget Estimates hearings, then Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon (NSW) asked Dr Brendan Nelson, Director of the Australian War Memorial, how much the Memorial had received in donations from military and defence firms. The answer covered the years 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18 year to date, which would have been almost the full year, as the answer Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Lest We Forget again: Anzac Day is an opportunity to confront our violent frontier past and its shadow today.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a young Somali-Australian Muslim woman, was driven out of Australia last year after she implied that the Anzac sacred cow might be ready to graze new territory. ‘Lest. We. Forget.’, she said, ‘(Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)’. I thought she was on the right track and I said so, copping some of the Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Who’s Schlesinger now? Something that may have happened in the Nixon era could be relevant today.
It is said that, when President Richard Nixon, assailed by Watergate, drunk and psychotic, wandered the corridors of the White House in the dead of night, talking to portraits of his predecessors, members of his administration put measures in place to keep the President’s hands away from ‘the football’, the briefcase that always accompanied him, Continue reading »
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Hidden in plain sight: Aboriginal massacre map should be no surprise
Lyndall Ryan’s work on mapping the massacres of Aboriginal Australians builds on earlier work which has been ignored or glossed over by settler Australians. Perhaps this time, finally, we can make the link between Indigenous dispossession and the position of Aboriginal people today. Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Afghanistan infinitum or walking away? The possible cost of shared values
Where do Australia’s values come from and what are they? Ten years ago, Australia’s then Minister for Defence, Brendan Nelson, was convinced that our Australian values were forged on the battlefield:No group of Australians has given more, nor worked harder to shape and define our identity than those who have worn – and now wear Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. How we commemorate our wars in other people’s countries.
‘We need to talk about how we commemorate our wars in other people’s countries – and our own’, Honest History, 18 August 2016 “How would we feel if 1,000 Japanese turned up in Darwin wanting to celebrate the bombing of 1942.” Apart from the Frontier Wars against Indigenous Australians, all of Australia’s wars, from New Zealand in Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Is this the most sycophantic speech by an Australian prime minister? Julia Gillard’s address to the United States Congress, March 2011
‘All the way with LBJ’ has become the cliche that associates Conservative dependence on the US alliance. But Julia Gillard’s address to the US Congress is hard to beat! John Menadue. Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. A review of Douglas Newton’s five articles that take us behind the scenes in the Great War.
Douglas Newton confronts the really important questions about war David Stephens reviews five articles by Douglas Newton that take us ‘behind the scenes’ in the Great War Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Honest History’s Alternative Guide to the Australian War Memorial
Questioning the received view: Honest History’s Alternative Guide to the Australian War Memorial Which word should we use to describe what happened on 25 April 1915: ‘landing’ or ‘invasion’? Why do we refer to dead soldiers as ‘the fallen’? Does the ‘freedom’ we are said to have fought for in our many wars include the Continue reading »
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David Stephens. How did Canberra get its memorial to Kemal Atatürk?
The Atatürk Memorial in Anzac Parade, Canberra, was unveiled on Anzac Day 1985. Over the signature ‘Kemal Atatürk’, the memorial bears an inscription which commences like this: Those heroes that shed their blood And lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly Country. Therefore rest in peace. There is Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Bill Shorten’s Royal Commission proposal.
Labor and the banks go way, way back Bill Shorten’s proposal to have a Royal Commission into the banking system is not just good politics. It also taps into a long Labor tradition: banking Royal Commissions – and banking policy generally – occupy a special corner in Labor’s history. We need to see terms of Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Invading our smugness: thoughts on a diversity toolkit
Wednesday, 30 March, must have been a slow news day at the Daily Telegraph. It is difficult to find any other reasonable explanation for the fuss the Telegraph made about the ‘diversity toolkit’ it discovered on the website of the University of New South Wales. What followed, however, spoke volumes about how careless some in Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Malcolm Turnbull’s post-Anzac pitch to the Australian Defence Force
Tony Abbott admired soldiers. He liked to be around them, to talk about the fortunes of war (“shit happens,” as he memorably muttered to troops in Afghanistan). He quoted Samuel Johnson about how men despise themselves if they have never been a soldier. His Anzac Day Dawn Service speech last year at Gallipoli portrayed the Continue reading »
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David Stephens. ‘There will be blood’: ministerial remarks on the responsibility of children.
There will be blood from the sword up to the belly of a horse, and the thigh of a human, and the hock of a camel. And there will be great fear and trembling upon the earth. And those who see that wrath will be terrified, and trembling will seize them. (6 Ezra, Old Testament Continue reading »
